About the Poems

by Eric Gelsinger

LaSalle Park and College Night were both written when I was studying Latin and Sanskrit at the University. The narrative body of each is nourished by etymological veins (i.e. wire, withy, osier, wicker . . .); this isn't particularly interesting, except that, by virtues unknown to me, these relationships had integrated themselves in my linguistic intuition, thus constituting at least personal evidence of the organic bios of the language which binds us.

Aaron Lowinger revealed faults in LaSalle Park when he baptized it in song: parts of the crystal were evidently loose: they broke off and dissolved. What remains is a valuable lesson: sing it to test the integrity. You can find the song on the House Press website. If I had integrated the etymology, phonology, imagery, narrative, and rhythm, the poem would have adhered more easily to the memory, and made a point.
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Shane Meyer is a young street scholar of classics and music in Buffalo. He and I shared an occasional cocktail. For humanity, and perhaps all life, addiction is as definitive as desire. Here's a rather addled but sincere attempt to trace the corporeal course of those feelings - what we mystically call "emotions."
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If I am killed by a brown bear follows the same sort of intuitive "logic" that prevailed for me when high. It is the logic of comedy, the logic of the strange - I won't say of dreams. A silly little poem, but it makes me laugh.
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I've been to Europe is an old specimen from way back in 149, when I was pure. It is an anti-intellectual poem, for which I apologize, but an intellectual mystery runs through it that has kept me interested. I hope it has some value.